let it be
by Douglas Messerli
Marc Heustis (director) Miracle on Sunset
Boulevard / 1977
Marc Heustis’s seven minute film Miracle on
Sunset Boulevard advertises itself as a sped-up version of Sunset
Boulevard, but in fact has almost nothing to do with Billy Wilder’s film
except that it features an aging actress shopping in Beverly Hills on Wilshire
Blvd. where unexpectedly she is greeted by a fan wanting her autograph. So
horrified is she in being reminded of her long ago career that she lets the
wind whip the piece of paper which she attempting to sign out of her hand as
she goes on the run.
Late at night, a bit like Norma Desmond, she watches her old movies, but
once again grows terrified by the process of re-living passionate love scenes
from decades earlier and cries out several times (silently of course) “STOP!”
Utterly devastated to be so continually reminded of her age, she is
suddenly visited by the vision of a lovely woman who, a bit like a cartoon
vision of a figure just escaped from a Maxfield Parrish painting shows up and
evidently serves as a sort of mother-confident, campily reintroducing our
troubled movie star to the four elements of earth, air, wind, and fire. And
suddenly she materializes a young female child which the actress takes into her
arms. Either the mysterious seer is pimping as a provider to agèd pedophiles or
reintroducing our elderly wunderkind to her younger self, but the result is a
true miracle as the actress seems suddenly entirely content as she walks off
into the woods with her new child.
Starring Gregory Cruickshank, Viva DeLuxe and Marzipan with a background
mix of music by Mahler and Prokofiev, Heustis’ film is simply silly, its
redeeming quality providing seconds of bearable camp. We are told it captures
the spirit of the early films, of which Heustis was a founder, of the San
Francisco Frameline Festival.
Los Angeles, August 28, 2021
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August
2021).
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